“I felt bad for him,” Parcells says, “and worse for me.”
The upshot, beyond a 17–13 loss to the Eagles, was that Parcells turned back to the quarterback whose tepid production had compelled a switch. Naturally, Brunner’s confidence, and the offense’s faith in him, had nosedived. The Giants didn’t win again for another six weeks. The skid was only interrupted by an October 24 game against the St. Louis Cardinals that ended in a 20–20 tie. Quarterback Jeff Rutledge started for Big Blue in the team’s rare appearance on Monday Night Football. “One of the ugliest games,” Parcells recalls, “of all time.”
Two of Parcells’s daughters, Suzy and Dallas, were away at college. So in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, only his youngest daughter, Jill, and wife, Judy, were home to feel the brunt of the losses—from Parcells, who was miserable to be around, and from critics, whose clamor increased with each setback. On most Monday mornings during the season, Jill complained to her mother about feeling under the weather, and asked for permission to stay home from school. She hid the true reason for wanting to miss classes after the weekend, anticipation of her schoolmates trashing the Giants and her father, but Judy saw the correlation right away. “It was hard for me, too,” Judy recalls, “because I knew what she was dealing with. Bill was working so hard, yet not getting the results he wanted.”
Judy and Jill couldn’t even enjoy a basic perk of being related to the Giants head coach. Parcells had four season tickets for the mezzanine balcony, across the 35-yard line, at Giants Stadium, where an overhang protected the seats from rain and snow, but it did nothing to shield Parcells’s wife and daughter from hecklers. During one home game a man sitting in the level below railed incessantly. In a strident voice laced with curses, the fan criticized Parcells’s coaching ability along with his girth. By the fourth quarter Jill had reached her limit. Moments later Judy watched with nervousness and pride as Jill poked the spectator, demanding an end to the diatribe. The act wasn’t surprising coming from Jill, whose nickname was “Chip,” as in “off the old block”: among the Parcells girls, she had inherited her father’s assertiveness.
Mother and daughter watched the final quarter of the loss in relative peace.
In late October, a few weeks after Bob Ledbetter’s death, Charles Parcells underwent double-bypass surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. Despite requiring a transfusion, the operation seemed to go smoothly. But when Ida returned to Oradell after paying Charles a visit, she began complaining about sharp back pain. Ida phoned Parcells one morning, telling him that it had become so excruciating that she couldn’t get out of bed. Parcells arranged for a doctor to see her, but with the pain unabated the physician instructed Ida to immediately visit a local hospital for further testing.
The bad news turned worse. Diagnosed with malignant bone cancer, Ida was admitted to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan, perhaps the nation’s top cancer facility. However, the disease had progressed so far that she was given only a few weeks to live. “I had the feeling,” Parcells recalls, “that the world was coming down on my head.”
Parcells decided to keep the prognosis from Charles while he was still in the hospital. Released in early November, Charles first went to visit Bill and Judy in Upper Saddle River, when Parcells finally revealed the severity of Ida’s condition. Charles returned to Oradell distraught. Fortunately, he didn’t stay home alone because his daughter, Debbie, had been living with her parents. After only a few days Charles developed a blood infection and was rushed to nearby Hackensack University Medical Center. “It was one thing after another, and I didn’t handle it well,” Parcells says. “But what are you going do? They’re not going to cancel the football games. In this business, you don’t ever stop. You can’t stop. You’ve just got to keep going. When it comes down to it, I’m an it-is-what-it-is kinda guy. You’ve got to be able to deal with it. The poor-me syndrome is very damaging psychologically, and it loves company.”
In his scarce free time, Parcells shuttled between hospitals, seeking good news and finding none. Back at work, hopes of a turnaround proved equally elusive. On November 27, the Giants lost 27–12 to the Los Angeles Raiders, dropping to a record of 3-9-1, a painful reversal for an organization with playoff aspirations. Simms’s broken thumb seemed to have triggered an epidemic on the gridiron, as the Giants rarely finished a game without at least one additional injury. Waves of players landed on the injured-reserve list, which meant a minimum of four missed games, including such key performers as Pro Bowl linebacker Harry Carson and tailback Rob Carpenter. As healthy offensive players, particularly quarterback Scott Brunner, showed a tendency for carelessness and turnovers, frustration and anger boiled into the open. Linebackers Brad Van Pelt and Harry Carson demanded to be traded, and Lawrence Taylor complained publicly about the team’s regression.
Amid these challenges, another issue simmered. A few weeks into the season, Parcells had discovered an undercurrent of drug abuse on the team: several players were cocaine and marijuana users. Thanks to an innocent childhood, Parcells had virtually no experience with drugs, but he was convinced that marijuana and cocaine were hindering his team’s performance. Although his father had been an alcoholic until reaching sobriety in midlife, Parcells knew little about substance abuse. What he discovered led him to conclude that when the season ended, players linked to drug use would be given a chance to break their addiction, or be jettisoned.
Beyond the not-so-secret drug problem and injury epidemic, declining productivity among some veterans made Parcells’s Giants a far different team from the one for which he had worked as defensive coordinator. Too many players lacked the kind of esprit de corps that had been so useful during tough stretches. This mountain of problems would have been challenging for even an established coach, but Parcells’s inexperience only made the situation worse. The witty Jersey native found almost nothing to quip about as the season wore on.
Although his parents were in grave health, Parcells refrained from discussing their situations. When reporters inquired about his personal tribulations, Parcells offered only the basics while emphasizing that off-the-field difficulties didn’t reduce his commitment to the Giants. He veered off script only slightly in a postgame conference following a November 27 road loss to the Los Angeles Raiders. “I think I have this game in perspective. It’s very, very important, and it’s my job. But I understand what place it occupies in the world. It’s important for me, but it’s not the only thing.”
Nonetheless, in early December, Parcells received stunning news that put his job front and center. Parcells’s agent, Robert Fraley, telephoned to tell his client that the Giants were secretly courting someone to replace him. George Young had contacted Howard Schnellenberger, head coach of the powerhouse Miami Hurricanes, to gauge his interest in Parcells’s job. Agents representing coaches weren’t yet the norm, and Young avoided them whenever possible, so he was unaware of Schnellenberger’s connection to Parcells’s agent. The coincidence was perhaps the only bit of luck during the Twilight Zone of a season.
Parcells couldn’t believe that he was being judged after less than one injury-marred season. “I didn’t exactly want to run into George Young’s office and give him a hug,” Parcells says, “when I found out that in addition to all the bad things that were happening in my life, he was scouting Howard Schnellenberger’s future plans when he said he was scouting games.” Still, Parcells knew that Young’s shenanigans could take place only with the blessing of Big Blue’s owners.
Young and Schnellenberger had a long-standing relationship. In 1968, Young started his NFL career by joining the Baltimore Colts as a scout. Young got the job largely through Don Shula, Baltimore’s head coach at the time, but when Shula switched to the Dolphins in 1970, Young stayed with the Colts. After Schnellenberger was hired as Baltimore’s head coach in 1973, he appointed Young as his offensive coordinator.
Future Giants GM Ernie Accorsi, working in Baltimore’s front office, urged Young against a switch
to coaching: “You’re nuts.” With Baltimore struggling, Schnellenberger and his staff were dismissed less than two years later. Using their ties to Shula, Young and Schnellenberger landed with the Dolphins in 1975, Schnellenberger as offensive coordinator and Young back in the personnel department. When Young moved to the Giants as GM in 1979, Schnellenberger departed the Dolphins to coach the University of Miami.
Using a pro-style offense not yet standard in college, and the disciplinarian approach of his mentors Bear Bryant and Don Shula, Schnellenberger led the Hurricanes, unranked since the 1960s, to national prominence. In 1983 the football team, quarterbacked by Bernie Kosar, was heading to a 10-1 record, top-five ranking, and invitation to the Orange Bowl. Given Parcells’s struggles and Young’s relationship with Schnellenberger, the college coach became an alluring candidate. During the 1983 season, the former colleagues spoke face-to-face a few times.
Parcells says, “I never met Howard Schnellenberger, but to his credit he told my agent, ‘These guys are offering me the job, and I’m not going to take it. You need to tell Bill that that’s what they’re doing.’ So he was really a coach’s coach, and I’ve admired him for that.”
Aching for a second chance in the wheelhouse, Parcells was uncertain how to handle the explosive intelligence. The embattled coach turned to one of the NFL’s most successful and controversial figures: Raiders chief Al Davis. Parcells considered him to be among the smartest men in pro football, and their connection dated back to 1964, when Parcells played for Davis in a college all-star game. Upon joining the NFL sixteen years later, Parcells had reached out to him.
Through Parcells, the Raiders boss was reminded of his younger self, and grew fond enough of Big Blue’s head coach to become a sounding board. One of Davis’s conversation starters was asking sardonically, “Am I speaking to the coach of the New Yawk Giants? The cradle of professional football?” When Parcells brought up the Southwest Challenge, Davis’s remarks about vividly remembering him were met with skepticism.
On being told about the Schnellenberger situation, Davis advised Parcells to avoid making any rash decisions or stupid remarks to the press, and to focus on coaching. “Let me handle it,” Davis said.
Then one of the shrewdest men in football did his thing. Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder was a popular analyst on CBS’s The NFL Today, which aired on Sundays as a lead-in to the day’s football games. In an era before ESPN and the Internet, much of the league’s news came from NFL pregame shows, particularly Snyder’s. On Sunday, December 11, 1983, a few days after Parcells phoned Davis about his predicament, Jimmy the Greek dished hot news to his national audience: Howard Schnellenberger had been approached by the New York Giants to replace Bill Parcells. Snyder deemed it shameful that the team was ready to dump its talented head coach before his first season had even come to a close. For three consecutive weeks, Snyder reported on Parcells-related news. The analyst contended that although Schnellenberger was flattered by the Giants’ courtship, he had a handshake agreement with Donald Trump to coach his New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League.
Snyder’s public admonishments, and Schnellenberger’s apparent lack of interest in replacing Parcells, forced the Giants to reconsider. In a New York Times article the next day, headlined “Young Is Angry,” the GM refused to discuss Snyder’s reports. “Bill is the coach. I don’t want to comment on anything that speculative.” The speculation grew even more frenzied when Schnellenberger called a Monday press conference to address his future. The forty-nine-year-old coach stated that he would be joining neither the Giants nor the Generals. “After listening to them,” Schnellenberger said, “I told them that my desire was to move this football program along and try to win the national championship.”
Among Parcells’s players the rumor had turned into a running joke. After one practice offensive tackle Brad Benson inked “Schnellenberger” on a piece of trainer’s tape before heading to the tunnel at Giants Stadium to locate the head coach’s parking spot; there Benson stuck the tape over the nameplate for Parcells’s blue Cadillac. Someone removed it before the beleaguered coach had a chance to laugh, or cry.
In 1978, Dick Vermeil guided Philadelphia to its first playoff appearance in eighteen seasons. The milestone was spurred by the so-called Miracle at the Meadowlands, New York’s tragicomic loss to the Eagles on November 19, 1978, which had led to Big Blue’s hiring George Young and Ray Perkins, then to the Bill Parcells era. Citing burnout, Vermeil retired in 1982, two years after leading Philadelphia to its first Super Bowl appearance, and joined CBS as an NFL analyst. Vermeil had envisioned a bright future for Parcells based on Big Blue’s transformation under the young coordinator.
Late in 1983 Vermeil visited Giants Stadium in preparation for a broadcast. It was one day earlier than normal, but Vermeil wanted extra time with Parcells to encourage the rookie head coach suffering through a disastrous season. “He was getting his ass beat badly,” Vermeil says. “I really thought the guy was going to be a great coach, but boy was he depressed. He said, ‘You know something? I think they’re going to fire me. They’re going to run me out of New York real soon.’ ”
In a season filled with bad news, more was yet to come. On December 12 Parcells received word that Rex Dockery, his colleague at Texas Tech and Vanderbilt, had been killed in a plane crash in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, that left no survivors. Dockery, forty-one, was on the flight with three others as part of his duties as Memphis State head coach. “You know how many single-engine planes I was on with this guy?” says Parcells, whose fear of flying preceded the crash. “Probably fifteen.”
Four days after Dockery’s death, news came in that Doug Kotar had died of brain cancer at age thirty-two. Undrafted out of Kentucky, Doug Kotar had earned Big Blue’s fullback job during its 1974 preseason. A tough, inside-outside runner with good hands, the five-eleven, 205-pounder moved more like a pickup truck than a sports car while amassing 3,600 rushing yards, among the most in team history. Kotar’s death was expected, yet it cast a pall over the organization during the waning days of the season.
The Giants went as a team to Kotar’s funeral in western Pennsylvania, but the head coach didn’t make the trip: it coincided with his mother Ida’s funeral on December 16, one day before the football season ended. Doctors considered Charles’s health too tenuous to permit him to leave Hackensack University Medical Center to attend his wife’s funeral. Parcells and his siblings could only pray that one parent would make it out of the hospital alive.
Nearly a year earlier, in January 1983, only three weeks after Parcells’s promotion in New York, Dan Henning had been named head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. The symmetry was gratifying for the close friends and former college cohorts. After learning about Parcells’s dicey situation, Henning guaranteed him a coaching position with Atlanta if he got fired. Things had turned so dark late in the season that Parcells was considering quitting the Giants. Parcells concedes: “Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind to throw up my hands and say, ‘Who needs this?’ ”
Henning helped dissuade him. In one of their phone conversations, Henning asked Parcells, “Hey, what’s the worst thing that can happen to you?”
“What do you mean?” Parcells replied.
“Just what I said. What’s the absolute worst thing that can come out of this?”
“Well, the worst thing that can come out of this is that I get fired.”
“Big deal.”
The friends erupted in laughter.
For the talented and driven Giants coach, the stakes were certainly higher than Henning implied, but Parcells’s resurrection after living through football limbo in 1979 showed that he was more than just a survivor. The conversation with Henning helped bolster his resolve. “It was the same thing Al Davis kept telling me in the dark days,” Parcells recalls, “except that Dan uses nicer language.”
In the gloomy final week of the 1983 season, Parcells and George Young finally met to discuss the coach’s status. Although nei
ther man mentioned back-door maneuverings, Howard Schnellenberger was the elephant in the room. When Parcells asked whether he would be retained in 1984, Young suggested that the two wait until after the season finale to discuss the future.
After burying his mother, Bill Parcells traveled to Washington, D.C., to coach his team at RFK Memorial Stadium on December 17. The finale against the Redskins encapsulated the season. New York’s defense, led by Lawrence Taylor, performed as if it were in playoff contention, and the Giants took a 19–7 lead during the third quarter. However, the Redskins parlayed two New York fumbles by Jeff Rutledge into points en route to a 31–22 victory. That coda gave the Giants, Bill Parcells’s Giants, a 3-12-1 record for the franchise’s worst mark since 1974. Despite an NFL-high twenty-five players on the injured reserve, the team’s most jarring statistic was its league-worst 58 turnovers: 31 interceptions and 27 lost fumbles. Brunner threw 22 interceptions and 9 touchdowns. Parcells had named Jeff Rutledge the starting quarterback for the final two games, to no avail.
Big Blue’s offense lacked competence in football basics: passing, catching, blocking. The unit finished ranked twenty-fifth in the twenty-eight-team league, averaging 16.7 points. The defense, New York’s strength, dropped to a ranking of sixteenth after allowing an average of 21.7 points. Inevitably, some sports pundits called for a head-coaching change, citing the team’s decline after Ray Perkins’s departure. On the other hand, Parcells’s supporters contended that the team lacked even one above-average offensive lineman, or a quarterback who could stay healthy: reporters dubbed Simms “Phil Ouch.” The Giants weren’t devoid of talent, though. Four players made the Pro Bowl: linebackers Harry Carson and Lawrence Taylor, cornerback Mark Haynes, and kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh. Although the running game slipped after Rob Carpenter’s injury, rookie Butch Woolfolk rushed for 857 yards, and wideout Earnest Gray caught 78 passes, tying the NFC best, for 1,139 yards.
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